Smoking Girls on YouTube

Thousands of young girls appear in seductive videos on YouTube.
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Is this the last frontier in tobacco marketing or simply a global stage for the look-at-me generation?

Thousands of videos of sexy, smoking teens are appearing on the internet phenomenon YouTube, possibly being posted by tobacco manufacturers to recruit the next generation of smokers.

A global authority on tobacco marketing, Professor Simon Chapman, of the School of Public Health at Sydney University, has accused tobacco manufacturers of hijacking YouTube by flooding it with videos of glamorous, smoking teens. Each day 100 million video clips are viewed on YouTube.

But as each legal avenue is shut down, Professor Chapman says manufacturers must explore "dark marketing", the tobacco industry term for covert techniques.

"We looked at it [YouTube] the other day and were astonished to find a huge number of examples of young people smoking, whether it was in parties or just sitting around looking glamorous," he said. "It's entirely possible this is a social phenomenon; that kids are doing this because they find it fascinating. But I've been in this game long enough to say that the tobacco industry has been hiding under many rocks, and this one bears investigation."

Professor Chapman will investigate the matter further with the help of a federal grant.

At least 27,000 videos are returned when smoking is typed into the YouTube search engine.

The vast majority portray young women smoking while partying, talking or simply striking seductive poses, leading Professor Chapman's team to conclude young males are the target.

A digital marketing expert, Jean-Claude Abouchar, of Capture Communications, said YouTube's anonymity - users can hide behind aliases - provided the perfect cover for companies wanting to infiltrate the teen world.

"It's the perfect Trojan horse," he said. "They can upload videos of stars smoking in movies and call the clips 'celebrities' or add the actor's name or movie title to the video. And while that's not incorrect, it's a sneaky way of embedding their message that smoking is sexy or cool."

Each time a video is viewed users can rate it or send it to friends. "Effectively, they've got a worldwide sales force," Mr Abouchar said. Posting videos on YouTube is free.

Professor Chapman said: "If I was a tobacco marketer I'd be saying, 'It's not illegal; it's an international market and it's unregulated,' and it goes right to the heart of what I believe will be the future of tobacco marketing."

Tobacco advertising has been banned in Australia since 1992.

A spokesman for Philip Morris Australia, Colin Lippiatt, said the company abided by the law and that internet advertising without age verification was inappropriate and should be banned.

YouTube (now owned by giant Google) has declined to comment.

Comments

[MintyMongrel noatspam yahoo nodotspam com]

NO no no - you got it aaaall wrong, Mr. Global Authority person!

First, background: http://tinyurl.com/y8o3ck (tinyurl dot com slash y803ck).

We don't come out much, this anonymous dark of the perpetual internet shroud our sanctuary for such passions. When public computer networks were message boards, the files swapped amongst them were scans of tobacco advertising copy models, candids, movie stills, health reference stock images, ... By the time my own heart started to yearn, the technology had advanced such that one could download wee seven-second movie clips of a perplexed amateur model or girlfriend trying to smile and drag at the same time. Aye, them were truly the days. Still, the times don't stand still...

...and now the kidz use YouTube! After all, it is one of the easiest ways to distribute media content. Popular too. Only now the interweb's blown the door off the whole shed, the content's grown in size and vision. Samples from companies that (solely) produce smoking fetish videos, a thousand channels to snatch clips from, web-cam girls with mouths to feed, ... And that's what you're gettin' on the 'Tube, here. Google "smoking fetish" for the scope of the phenomenon.

I dare say the tobacco companies don't mind this state of affairs - it's certainly on message - but there's no reason to believe them behind it. The sheer size of the community that's crawled out of the woodwork this last decade or so is enough momentum on its own. Not convinced? Think harder, and you'll realise that our cosy porn industry and big "butter wouldn't melt" tobacco wouldn't touch each other with a (cancer) stick.

So sorry Simon - *gong*! - alas its the dick to blame again. Google-Tube's take on it all could have been interesting though, eh?

.....are you on camera-phone today??.........[*]

[Aaron]

Actually it isn't the tobacco companies, it's all those Jew cunts running major corporations. They're going to take over the world. We need to stop them, quickly. Can't gas enough of those fucking Jews.

[Creeped Out]

Your paranoia is terrifying. First you say smoking makes you look ugly and is not cool. Then you complain about of videos of people smoking being dangerous because they're glamorous. How can anything that is ugly and uncool be glamorous? Get some help. You're obsessed with this.

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